Sabre CEO Sean Menke has a vision to create a seamless travel experience in which all transactions, preferences, and changes are connected, automatic, and seamless.

Menke believes Sabre should be the pioneer that creates a connected platform for all travel-related transactions. The idea is to meet the specific needs - including everything related to bookings of flights, car rentals, hotel accommodations, etc. - of every trip in one place. It also means providing the opportunity to have all bookings related to the same trip automatically update if, say, a flight were to change. The platform aims to eventually aid all service providers and is expected to like an app store for the travel industry - allowing developers to build various travel applications for the platform.

“From where I sit, there’s no other company that has the position vision and commitment to be this platform,” Menke told investors earlier this year during Sabre’s investor day.

Sabre’s chief information officer and chief technology - both of whom have been on the team for less than a year - recently dug into the vision to provide updates on the progress of the company’s transformation. The company expects to spend $500 million on tech infrastructure and $500 million in labor this year, with total tech costs projected to increase compound annual growth rates by 3 to 4 percent. Sabre is leaning on open-source libraries to help accelerate the work that needs to be done, using code that already exists to propel new ideas.

Nearly 70 per cent of travel buyers say that enforcing policy is one of the most challenging aspects of their job, but new research also identified a large gap in traveler knowledge of policy when it comes to booking hotels.

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